Cathedral Quarter, Belfast

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The Cathedral Quarter in Belfast, Northern Ireland, is an area roughly situated between Royal Avenue and the Dunbar Link in the city centre. It is so called because St Anne's Cathedral lies at its heart.

1 History
2 Cultural quarter
3 The Laganside years
4 The future
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

[edit] History

Traditionally the Cathedral Quarter was the centre of Belfast's trade and warehousing district, which sprung up directly from the prosperous linen and shipbuilding industries. The quarter still retains some of Belfast's oldest buildings and thoroughfares, including Waring Street and Hill Street. The area fell into decline in the last century, but more recently it has reemerged as Belfast's dedicated 'cultural quarter'.

View of the Northern Whig building from Waring Street.

[edit] Cultural quarter

The definition of the area as a cultural quarter mostly came about because of the high concentration of arts and culture based organisations that are based there. As is the case with London's Covent Garden and Dublin's Temple Bar, low rent and a central city location attracted the area to a wide variety of tenants not otherwise represented in the city. Some examples include Northern Visions, Belfast Print Workshop and Belfast's Zen Meditation community, which has its heaquarters at Black Mountain Zen Centre in Catheral Buildings. However, dilapidated infrastructure prevented any sort of mass repopulation of the area until recently. This was made worse in 2003 when the North Street Arcade, a listed building from the 1930s in the traditional Art Deco style, burned down in what many people believe were suspicious circumstances.^[1]

Belfast Assembly Rooms, centre, and The Northern Whig, right.

A rich literary heritage is evident in the area. The Northern Whig was a popular satirical newspaper in the 19th Century (very much in the same vein as Punch), with its headquarters opposite The Assembly Rooms, briefly the seat of Northern Ireland's government before the completion of Stormont. Today The Northern Whig building is a pub/restaurant, but the tradition of satirical writing still has a home in Cathedral Quarter through The Vacuum, which has its offices in the area. Cathedral Quarter is very close to both the Belfast Central Library building and the headquarters of local newspaper publication the Belfast Telegraph. The Sunday World has its Belfast Offices in Commercial Court in the Cathedral Quarter. Another newspaper, the Belfast News Letter, formerly had its headquarters on North Street. As if to emphasise this literary trend, a popular pub on North Street is named after Belfast poet John Hewitt. Belfast's Custom House, situated on the edge of Cathedral Quarter, was a popular site for public speakers during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. In the vein of London's Speakers' Corner, the city's citizens often participated in the art of lively and spontateous debate on any given subject. Today, in the site's reincarnation as Custom House Square, activities are a little more pedestrian and family-orientated.

Also central to the area is the Belfast campus of the University of Ulster, incorporating the Art College. Nearby North Street is home to many of Belfast's most notorious bars and venues, particularly renowned during the punk movement of the 1970s. These include The Front Page and Giro's (closed 2004). Derry rockers The Undertones were regular visitors to the University of Ulster's student union building, the Conor Hall, as well as The Assembly Rooms, a building with its own remarkable history but now derelict. Local punk performer and producer Teri Hooley ran a record store called Cathedral Records in the North Street Arcade before 2003's fire.

Other arts organisations active in the area include:

Northern Visions
Belfast Exposed (photographic gallery)
The Vacuum newspaper (satirical publication)
Community Arts Forum
Black Box (arts venue)
Belfast Community Circus School
Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival
Belfast Film Festival

[edit] The Laganside years

In recent years, Belfast based public-private body Laganside Corporation has announced plans to revitalise the area. Their sponsored initiatives have included a 'Managed Workspace' scheme, in which artists are invited to inhabit workshop space owned and refurbished by Laganside. The first such scheme was the refurbishment in 2002 of an old cotton warehouse, named Cotton Court. Other Managed Workspaces are at 23-25 Donegall Street and 9-13 Royal Avenue. It was at this time that Cathedral Quarter was given its name. Such was the popularity of the scheme that many other quarters have subsequently emerged in Belfast, both spontaneously and by design, such as the Gaeltach Quarter', 'Titanic Quarter and Queens Quarter. The newfound enthusiasm for the Cathedral Quarter has seen the commitment of a number of private investors, resulting in a number of hotel and bar developments appearing in recent years. Three competing commercial developments are currently in progress in the area. Public investment, mostly on the part of Belfast City Council, has also been apparent. In 2003, the council began a programme of street landscaping that began with laying new paving stones in Hill Street and Talbot Street, and which culminated in the opening in 2004 of Custom House Square, a council-managed public square in front of Belfast's old Custom House building.

[edit] The future

North Street Arcade, with graffiti alleging that the 2003 fire was deliberate

The extent of private development in the Cathedral Quarter has lead to criticism from the area's residents as to the intentions of Laganside Corporation in the area. A mixture of public and private developments initiatives has resulted in a general groundswell of support for the area, but critics have noted that Cathedral Quarter suffers from a lack of general leadership and accountability. The majority of the land in the area is owned by private developers, and the area fronting Royal Avenue and Donegall Street, which has been earmarked for a development due to open in 2010, was recently center of a controversy between the planners Dunloe-Ewart and coalition of the residents fronted by the Community Arts Forum. Eventually, the argument had to be mediated by the Northern Ireland Office, thought the NIO have no more of a say in the future of the area as any other party. Some of these problems may be ironed out when Laganside closes its offices in 2009, when it has promised to split responsibility for its development briefs, including Cathedral Quarter, between the Department of Culture, Arts & Leisure in Northern Ireland (DCALNI) and Belfast City Council. This will way the future of the area in the favour of public ownership over private development.

In 2006, Belfast's Old Museum Arts Centre and the Northern Ireland Arts Council announced plans to develop a dedicated arts venue for the city on the site of the Talbot Street car park. NIAC and Belfast City Council provided funds for a temporary arts venue on HIll Street, named 'The Black Box', until the Talbot Street development is finished.

Other future developments include the Four Corners Hotel, St Annes Square on the site of another former car park and the enigmatic The Can at Custom House Square.

In the meantime, it can be said that Cathedral Quarter is quickly developing into a diverse and lively area, with a variety of restaurants and hotels opening at an exponential rate.

These include: